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Estimated time of infection vs. confirmed infections

Following the ideas from Tomas Pueyo's Medium post "Coronavirus: Why You Must Act Now" [1], we assume the average time from infection to death at 23 days [2]. The data is pulled from the COVID-19 Data Repository by Johns Hopkins CSSE [3] every hour. Countries with a minimnum of 1000 confirmed cases and 40 confirmed deaths are included in this analysis.

The time from infection to death is equal to the incubation period plus the time from symptoms to death. This is used to estimate the time of the infections that lead to the observed deaths. We take the last fatality rate per country (total_cases/total_deaths) to estimate the number of infections that are responsible for the observed deaths.

In the figures below, you can observe successive waves of infections (dashed), detections (black) and deaths (red) for each country. The upper panel shows the absolute number of events. The dashed lines show the estimated number of infections. The lower panel shows the normalized number of events. Here the temporal delay between the waves and the relative change between each other can be observed.

[1] https://medium.com/@tomaspueyo/coronavirus-act-today-or-people-will-die-f4d3d9cd99ca

[2] https://github.com/midas-network/COVID-19/tree/master/parameter_estimates/2019_novel_coronavirus

[3] https://github.com/CSSEGISandData/COVID-19/tree/master/csse_covid_19_data/csse_covid_19_time_series

US
Brazil
India
Mexico
Peru
United Kingdom
Italy
Russia
France
Colombia
Germany
Iran
Argentina
Spain
Poland
South Africa
Ukraine
Indonesia
Turkey
Romania
Czechia
Hungary
Chile
Canada
Belgium
Philippines
Pakistan
Ecuador
Netherlands
Bulgaria
Portugal
Iraq
Egypt
Bolivia
Sweden
Japan
Tunisia
Bangladesh
Slovakia
Greece
Switzerland
Austria
Paraguay
Jordan
Bosnia and Herzegovina
Morocco
Guatemala
Croatia
Lebanon
Nepal
Saudi Arabia
Serbia
Honduras
Israel
Panama
Moldova
North Macedonia
Ireland
Azerbaijan
Georgia
China
Uruguay
Armenia
Slovenia
Lithuania
Ethiopia
Costa Rica
Dominican Republic
West Bank and Gaza
Algeria
Kazakhstan
Kenya
Burma
Malaysia
Libya
Afghanistan
Belarus
Venezuela
Sudan
Denmark
Albania
Latvia
Oman
El Salvador
Kosovo
Nigeria
South Korea
Kyrgyzstan
Kuwait
Syria
United Arab Emirates
Sri Lanka
Zimbabwe
Montenegro
Zambia
Cameroon
Estonia
Thailand
Malawi
Senegal
Bahrain
Cuba
Finland
Jamaica
Australia
Namibia
Botswana
Madagascar
Mozambique
Luxembourg
Congo (Kinshasa)
Angola
Ghana
Norway
Somalia
Uzbekistan
Eswatini
Qatar
Trinidad and Tobago
Mali
Mauritania
Malta
Guyana
Uganda
Cyprus
Rwanda
Suriname
Lesotho
Belize
Haiti
Mongolia
Cote d'Ivoire
Cabo Verde
Cambodia
Bahamas
Hong Kong
Taiwan*
Maldives
Burkina Faso
Papua New Guinea
Guinea
Congo (Brazzaville)
Djibouti
Gabon
Andorra
Togo
South Sudan

Ahead of the curve

Some countries start testing the population earlier in the outbreak than others. The time delay between the wave of deaths and the wave of confirmed cases is indicative for how early a country is detecting new cases ahead of the increase of deaths. Earlier detection means a better chances for successful isolation of an infected person and treatment of the desease.

We measure the distance of the maximum of cumulative deaths and new deaths to the number of infections to estimate the progression of the infection across countries.

If, in the early phase of the infection wave, the number of deaths rises faster than the number of confirmed cases, the distance drops, indicating that

A comparison of countries with respect to their mean time for reponse is presented below.

To determine the above values, we plot the number of confirmed cases (solid black lines) and the number of deaths (dashed black lines). From this, we measure the distance of the day of maximum deaths (dashed red lines) to the day of confirmed cases at this y-value.

The distance is indicative for how fast the humber of confirmed cases increases comapred to the increase of the number of deaths.

US
Brazil
India
Mexico
Peru
United Kingdom
Italy
Russia
France
Colombia
Germany
Iran
Argentina
Spain
Poland
South Africa
Ukraine
Indonesia
Turkey
Romania
Czechia
Hungary
Chile
Canada
Belgium
Philippines
Pakistan
Ecuador
Netherlands
Bulgaria
Portugal
Iraq
Egypt
Bolivia
Sweden
Japan
Tunisia
Bangladesh
Slovakia
Greece
Switzerland
Austria
Paraguay
Jordan
Bosnia and Herzegovina
Morocco
Guatemala
Croatia
Lebanon
Nepal
Saudi Arabia
Serbia
Honduras
Israel
Panama
Moldova
North Macedonia
Ireland
Azerbaijan
Georgia
China
Uruguay
Armenia
Slovenia
Lithuania
Ethiopia
Costa Rica
Dominican Republic
West Bank and Gaza
Algeria
Kazakhstan
Kenya
Burma
Malaysia
Libya
Afghanistan
Belarus
Venezuela
Sudan
Denmark
Albania
Latvia
Oman
El Salvador
Kosovo
Nigeria
South Korea
Kyrgyzstan
Kuwait
Syria
United Arab Emirates
Sri Lanka
Zimbabwe
Montenegro
Zambia
Cameroon
Estonia
Thailand
Malawi
Senegal
Bahrain
Cuba
Finland
Jamaica
Australia
Namibia
Botswana
Madagascar
Mozambique
Luxembourg
Congo (Kinshasa)
Angola
Ghana
Norway
Somalia
Uzbekistan
Eswatini
Qatar
Trinidad and Tobago
Mali
Mauritania
Malta
Guyana
Uganda
Cyprus
Rwanda
Suriname
Lesotho
Belize
Haiti
Mongolia
Cote d'Ivoire
Cabo Verde
Cambodia
Bahamas
Hong Kong
Taiwan*
Maldives
Burkina Faso
Papua New Guinea
Guinea
Congo (Brazzaville)
Djibouti
Gabon
Andorra
Togo
South Sudan